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Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) — The War on Poverty is now 50 years old. Has it failed? The answer varies, depending on whether we use the government’s official poverty measure or its much newer, and far more informative, one.

The new measure demonstrates that government programs are doing a lot of good, especially for children. Nonetheless, the overall picture is more than sobering, and offers a fresh perspective on the mounting national debate over poverty and inequality.

The official poverty measure, developed in the 1960s, has drawn withering criticism for a long time. It doesn’t include a number of government transfer programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — food stamps — or the earned income tax credit. Under the official measure, people might be counted as poor even though they get a significant amount of money from the government.

Another problem is that the official measure doesn’t adequately take into account the varying needs of different types of families and individuals. For example, adults with children need more money than adults without children, and a sensible measure of poverty must make sufficient adjustments for that fact.

In 1995, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report cataloging serious flaws in the official poverty measure and recommending alternatives. But it wasn’t until 2011 that the Census Bureau settled on an alternative, which it called the Supplemental Poverty Measure. Though some people see shortcomings in the new standard, it is generally agreed that it is a lot better than the old one.

Important new research, by Liana Fox of the Swedish Institute for Social Research and her colleagues at Columbia University, demonstrates that with the Supplemental Poverty Measure, some historical trends look a lot better than they do with the official measure. Using data from 1967 to the present, the researchers offer four major findings.

First, government programs have had a big impact in reducing poverty among children. In 1967, they reduced child poverty by merely 3 percentage points (from 25 percent to 22 percent). In 2012, they reduced it by 12 percentage points (from about 31 percent to about 19 percent). The beneficial impact of government programs is especially large for children in “deep poverty” — those whose families are below one-half of the poverty line.

Second, the beneficial effects of government programs are largest when the economy goes sour. Without them, the deep poverty rate for children would be about 20 percent during economic downturns. With such programs, it ranges from 4 percent to 5 percent.

Third, the beneficial effects have grown substantially over time. If we use the Supplemental Poverty Measure, we can see that government programs reduced poverty in 2012 by an impressive 15 percentage points. In 1967, the decrease was a lot smaller.

Fourth, some programs have especially big impacts. All by itself, for example, the earned income tax credit reduced child poverty by no less than 5 percentage points in 2012. Food and nutrition programs had almost as large an effect. In 1967, the impact of such programs was close to zero.

To be sure, these findings raise many questions. As Fox and her co-authors acknowledge, their research says nothing about the behavioral effect of government programs. If these policies eliminate incentives to work, they would help to entrench poverty. No statistical poverty measure, standing by itself, can capture such effects.

But this point should not be overstated. The earned income tax credit is a major driver of the findings. By making it more remunerative to work, that program hardly eliminates incentives to get or hold a job.

The bad news is that the Supplemental Poverty Measure reveals that poverty levels remain high, and haven’t fallen a lot over time — 19 percent in 1967 and 16 percent in 2012. Among children, the level has been dented only modestly, from about 22 percent in 1967 to about 19 percent in 2012 — meaning that almost one-fifth of American children now live in poverty.

With respect to children in particular, the U.S. does poorly compared with other developed nations. In recent years, its child poverty rate has been higher than that in Norway, Canada, Japan, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Slovakia, Iceland, Finland, Cyprus, Ireland, Germany, France, Malta, Italy and the UK.

This evidence is especially disturbing when combined with research showing that the U.S. now has relatively low levels of intergenerational mobility. Those who are stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder have tended to remain there.

Here is a question that can’t be asked too often: What are we going to do about this? Our answers should be informed by facts, not fictions.

Cass R. Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University professor at Harvard Law School, is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the co-author of Nudge and author of Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas, forthcoming in March.

Photo: Jeffrey Simms Photography via Flickr

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With a deranged narcissist in the Oval Office and his lackey controlling the Department of Justice, there is no point in looking to the federal government to curb police violence. Instead, President Donald J. Trump will do everything in his power to encourage it. In the wake of protests over the murder of George Floyd, he has demanded that governors crack down on protestors: "You have to dominate. ... If you don't dominate, you're wasting your time," he told them.

Moreover, most local police authorities are under local control -- mayors, city councils, district attorneys, police chiefs, sheriffs. That's where the accountability for police misconduct begins.

<p>But Congress could take a significant step toward reining in that misconduct by passing a bill to end the practice of allowing the Pentagon to give surplus war equipment to local police departments. There is simply no good reason for police in any city -- from Washington to Wichita -- to roll down the streets in armored personnel carriers, armed with battering rams and grenade launchers. They are not going to war. American citizens are not enemy combatants.</p><p>Several Democrats have already announced their intention to introduce legislation to end the practice. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, has said he would introduce such a measure as an amendment to the all-important annual defense policy bill -- which would give it a decent shot at passing since Republicans are deeply invested in the defense bill.</p><script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
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</script><p>After protests broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer, local law enforcement authorities took to the streets in armored carriers, further inflaming tensions. They showed little inclination toward restraint or de-escalation. The same thing is occurring in cities around the country right now.</p><p>Off-loading surplus military hardware to local police departments was never a good idea. The practice started back during the 1990s as violent crime peaked and local and federal authorities were feverishly devoted to winning the so-called war on drugs. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the program ramped up, doling out battlefield gear even to small towns no self-respecting terrorist ever heard of.</p><p>Law enforcement agents became enamored of images of themselves decked out like soldiers on special-ops missions. According to <em>The New York Times</em>, the website of a South Carolina sheriff's department featured its SWAT team "dressed in black with guns drawn, flanking an armored vehicle that looks like a tank and has a mounted .50-caliber gun."</p><p>Poor neighborhoods are subjected to the military-style hardware much more often than affluent ones. And the consequence of that sort of policing is often less safety, not more. When the police behave like an occupying force, the residents return the favor -- treating them with suspicion and contempt. That hardly makes it more likely that police will get the information they need to solve crimes.</p><p>The administration of President Barack Obama understood that and curbed the Pentagon program after Ferguson. In the final years of the Obama administration, the Pentagon reported that local law enforcement agencies had returned 126 tracked armored vehicles, 138 grenade launchers and 1,623 bayonets, the Times said. Pause for a moment just to consider that. Why would any police department -- even New York City's army of 36,000 officers -- need bayonets and grenade launchers? Once you implant in the heads of police officers the notion that they need battlefield gear, their use of violence against unarmed citizens escalates as a natural consequence.</p><script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
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</script><p>But guess what happened when Trump took office? He removed Obama's restraints on the Pentagon program, once again allowing local law enforcement agents to go to battle against the citizens they are sworn to protect. No surprise there. In 2017, Trump gave a speech in which he urged police officers not to worry about injuring a suspect during an arrest.</p><p>Police violence against black people is a problem as old as the nation itself. It didn't start with Trump's presidency and won't end when it's over. Rather, the racist culture that is embedded among so many law enforcement agencies showed itself clearly when major police unions enthusiastically backed Trump's election. When Trump is finally gone, the campaign to eradicate that culture can begin in earnest.</p>